New York, New York

by thecustomhouse

Earlier I posted the NYT obituary of John Fairfax, an adventurer of the old school: “Mr. Fairfax was among the last avatars of a centuries-old figure: the lone-wolf explorer, whose exploits are conceived to satisfy few but himself. His was a solitary, contemplative art that has been all but lost amid the contrived derring-do of adventure-based reality television.”

In New York City, this observation, that an action is changed by the knowledge of its observation (and perhaps cheapened), rings especially true. I can never decide whether the electricity in the air is worth it. Does one behave better when he or she knows that others are watching? Even if she does, the question remains… who is more important, the person we are when someone’s watching, or the person we are when no one is watching? There’s something extremely dear and beautiful in the type of privacy that cannot be replicated in a city… the luxury of confronting the world directly, unfiltered through the knowledge of display.

But my feelings are not as simple as all that, I love it here. This a link to Joan Didion’s exquisite essay on New York,Goodbye to All That.